September 2023 Message from Dean Mayo
September 27, 2023
TGS is here to support you in your journey and my goal is to keep you informed and connected to the resources available to graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.”
Kelly Mayo
Dean of The Graduate School and Associate Provost for Graduate Education
Welcome to the Fall Quarter and the start of a new academic year. This is always an exciting time as we welcome new students and postdocs to our campuses and embrace this time of renewal for the year ahead.
TGS is here to support you in your journey and my goal is to keep you informed and connected to the resources available to graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. I was glad to meet some of you in person at our recent welcome receptions and appreciation events. I was also delighted to engage with many of you and to see such an impressive turnout at our TGS Resource Fair, which concluded our orientation experience and introduced new TGS students to the vast community of support at Northwestern.
As President Schill and Provost Hagerty mentioned in their welcome message, we are pleased to have such a diverse student body at Northwestern this year. I would especially like to acknowledge our first-generation graduate students and postdocs and all those from underrepresented and marginalized backgrounds. Our steadfast commitment is to prioritize a strong sense of inclusion and belonging on our campuses and in our communities.
In August we were happy to welcome Brittany Young to TGS as our new director of diversity and inclusion. Our Office of Diversity and Inclusion also recently selected six graduate student interns for the 2023–24 academic year from various disciplines and backgrounds. We are grateful for their insights and contributions, and I hope you will have the opportunity to meet these dedicated individuals who are supporting our efforts to create a diverse and inclusive community of scholars at Northwestern.
We were also pleased to recently celebrate National Postdoc Appreciation Week (NPAW). Postdocs are an important part of our institution and contribute to the fabric of Northwestern in countless ways. The NPAW festivities were just a small token of our appreciation as we continue to invest in and prioritize the needs of this vital community. We are excited to announce a new pilot Conference Travel Grant program for postdocs. More information about these grants will be available soon; please stay tuned to the OPA Wire e-newsletter for an upcoming announcement.
For graduate students, our PhD and MFA Conference Travel Grant program has been in place for more than 20 years. These grants assist PhD and MFA students in attending conferences that support their academic and professional development. Due to large increases in requests for post-pandemic travel, we were able to increase TGS funding for these grants for the 2023–24 academic year. We will also implement a quarterly funding cap to try to distribute available funds to as many students as possible. Please visit the TGS website to learn about other opportunities and programs to help support you and make your time at Northwestern a fun and successful learning experience.
In addition, we recently launched a new PhD and Postdoc Success website in collaboration with Northwestern Career Advancement. I hope PhD students and postdocs find this to be a valuable tool that supports their success on campus and in their careers.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the thoughtful and deliberate work that is underway by representatives of the graduate student union (NUGW-UE) and University leadership. Collective bargaining negotiations began in June and have been very productive. As a reminder, until both parties finalize the terms of an initial collective bargaining agreement, the University must maintain the “status quo” when it comes to bargaining unit members’ terms and conditions of employment. You can read more about graduate student unionization on this website and the Provost and I will keep you informed as there is more information to share.
Wishing you all a positive and productive start to the academic year and a pleasant fall. Do not hesitate to reach out to me or any of our TGS staff members if we can be of help.
Sincerely,
Kelly
Kelly E. Mayo
Walter and Jennie Bayne Professor of Molecular Biosciences
Dean of The Graduate School and
Associate Provost for Graduate Education
Categories: From the Dean